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Title: Direct astrophysical tests of chiral effective field theory at supranuclear densities

Abstract

Recent observations of neutron stars with gravitational waves and X-ray timing provide unprecedented access to the equation of state (EoS) of cold dense matter at densities difficult to realize in terrestrial experiments. At the same time, predictions for the EoS equipped with reliable uncertainty estimates from chiral effective field theory (xEFT) allow us to bound our theoretical ignorance. In this work, we analyze astrophysical data using a nonparametric representation of the neutron-star EoS conditioned on xEFT to directly constrain the underlying physical properties of the compact objects without introducing modeling systematics. We discuss how the data alone constrain the EoS at high densities when we condition on xEFT at low densities. Here, we also demonstrate how to exploit astrophysical data to directly test the predictions of xEFT for the EoS up to twice nuclear saturation density, in order to estimate the density at which these predictions might break down. We nd that the existence of massive pulsars, gravitational waves from GW170817, and NICER observations of PSR J0030+0451 favor xEFT predictions for the EoS up to nuclear saturation density over a more agnostic analysis by as much as a factor of 7 for the quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations used in this work. While xEFT predictions using QMC are fully consistent with gravitational-wave data up to twice nuclear saturation density, NICER observations suggest that the EoS stiffens relative to these predictions at or slightly above nuclear saturation density. Additionally, for these QMC calculations, we marginalize over the uncertainty in the density at which xEFT begins to break down, constraining the radius of a 1.4M$$\bigodot$$ neutron star to R1.4 = $$11.40^{+1.38}_{–1.04}$$ ($$12.54^{+0.71}_{–0.63}$$) km and the pressure at twice nuclear saturation density to p(2nsat) = $$14.2^{+18.1}_{–8.4}$$ ($$28.7^{+15.3}_{–15.0}$$) MeV=fm3 with massive pulsar and gravitational-wave (and NICER) data.

Authors:
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [5]
  1. Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Kavli Inst. for Cosmological Physics (KICP)
  2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  3. California State Univ., Fullerton, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
  5. Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Kavli Inst. for Cosmological Physics (KICP); Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Enrico Fermi Inst.
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF)
OSTI Identifier:
1756799
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-20-22615
Journal ID: ISSN 2469-9985; TRN: US2205679
Grant/Contract Number:  
89233218CNA000001; AC52- 06NA25396; FG02-00ER41132; AC02- 05CH11231; PHY-0757058; PHY-0823459; PHY-1430152; PHY-1836734; PHY-1708081
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Physical Review. C
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 102; Journal Issue: 5; Journal ID: ISSN 2469-9985
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS; Atomic, Nuclear and Particle Physics

Citation Formats

Essick, Reed, Tews, Ingo, Landry, Philippe, Reddy, Sanjay, and Holz, Daniel E. Direct astrophysical tests of chiral effective field theory at supranuclear densities. United States: N. p., 2020. Web. doi:10.1103/physrevc.102.055803.
Essick, Reed, Tews, Ingo, Landry, Philippe, Reddy, Sanjay, & Holz, Daniel E. Direct astrophysical tests of chiral effective field theory at supranuclear densities. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevc.102.055803
Essick, Reed, Tews, Ingo, Landry, Philippe, Reddy, Sanjay, and Holz, Daniel E. Wed . "Direct astrophysical tests of chiral effective field theory at supranuclear densities". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevc.102.055803. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1756799.
@article{osti_1756799,
title = {Direct astrophysical tests of chiral effective field theory at supranuclear densities},
author = {Essick, Reed and Tews, Ingo and Landry, Philippe and Reddy, Sanjay and Holz, Daniel E.},
abstractNote = {Recent observations of neutron stars with gravitational waves and X-ray timing provide unprecedented access to the equation of state (EoS) of cold dense matter at densities difficult to realize in terrestrial experiments. At the same time, predictions for the EoS equipped with reliable uncertainty estimates from chiral effective field theory (xEFT) allow us to bound our theoretical ignorance. In this work, we analyze astrophysical data using a nonparametric representation of the neutron-star EoS conditioned on xEFT to directly constrain the underlying physical properties of the compact objects without introducing modeling systematics. We discuss how the data alone constrain the EoS at high densities when we condition on xEFT at low densities. Here, we also demonstrate how to exploit astrophysical data to directly test the predictions of xEFT for the EoS up to twice nuclear saturation density, in order to estimate the density at which these predictions might break down. We nd that the existence of massive pulsars, gravitational waves from GW170817, and NICER observations of PSR J0030+0451 favor xEFT predictions for the EoS up to nuclear saturation density over a more agnostic analysis by as much as a factor of 7 for the quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations used in this work. While xEFT predictions using QMC are fully consistent with gravitational-wave data up to twice nuclear saturation density, NICER observations suggest that the EoS stiffens relative to these predictions at or slightly above nuclear saturation density. Additionally, for these QMC calculations, we marginalize over the uncertainty in the density at which xEFT begins to break down, constraining the radius of a 1.4M$\bigodot$ neutron star to R1.4 = $11.40^{+1.38}_{–1.04}$ ($12.54^{+0.71}_{–0.63}$) km and the pressure at twice nuclear saturation density to p(2nsat) = $14.2^{+18.1}_{–8.4}$ ($28.7^{+15.3}_{–15.0}$) MeV=fm3 with massive pulsar and gravitational-wave (and NICER) data.},
doi = {10.1103/physrevc.102.055803},
journal = {Physical Review. C},
number = 5,
volume = 102,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Nov 04 00:00:00 EST 2020},
month = {Wed Nov 04 00:00:00 EST 2020}
}

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